It’s early and I can still feel the warmth of my sleep as I sit here writing this morning. My dreams seem so vivid and busy lately. In my dreams I am laboring away at some task that doesn’t matter. Sound like what it felt like in my last job when I wasn’t doing therapy or talking with the wonderful staff. The other mind of the dream state is full of interesting information about who we are and what we are working on. These dreams feel like stuff I am trying to move beyond. Maybe it is time to go exploring the dreamscape and see what insights await. Some would argue that the dream state is more a slice of reality then what we imagine our life to be in our waking state.
However, there seems to be more than enough insights available from practicing mindfulness in the day-to-day dramas of life. This morning I woke with mindfulness on the mind. I thought one way I will be out in the world is through teaching mindfulness, which is wonderful practice for quieting the mind and for opening the heart. Mindfulness brings inward shifts at many levels.
The mind innately begins to quiet down when we take time to watch what is going on inside. This watchfulness simply notes, free of the burden of needing to judge, what thoughts are passing through. In watching the speed of the word stream of thoughts slows down because the intention of watching brings the attention of the mind into focus.
The heart and our emotional state are affected by mindfulness also. When we enter the impartial mode of observing our inner processes, we allow whatever is going on at a feeling level to surface so that we might become aware of it. If we can simply view and be ok with what we are feeling that opens the heart. All emotions are ok but sometimes we have learned to be judgmental about certain feelings. Anger is a great example because many of us were taught that anger is an emotion we shouldn’t feel and express. Anger is a natural emotion and to judge it as bad is simply not true. Yes the expression of anger can be destructive but that is more from stuffing it until the person blows. If anger was noticed and acknowledged as it came up the sometimes negative charge around it would easily dissipate and more awareness about self would come about.
The heart often contains the pain of feelings we have tried to avoid or suppress. This avoiding or trying to push down feelings never works and makes us guarded in the heart and closes us to the flow of love, compassion and kindness which is our natural state. We all have felt when our heart closes down and intuitively we know are hearts need to be open or we become less of what is possible in us.
With an open heart and a quiet mind we can be anything we want to be. The quiet mind is most often an open mind. When we are open the world awaits with positive anticipation our expression.